The Unseen World Series

Friday, July 11, 2014

This is Africa, a leading online forum for African opinion, arts and music features Charles Okereke. Read an excerpt from the interview below:

Charles Okereke – Life is about beauty

African
photography is on the rise. Following decades of photographic
misrepresentation by observers from outside the continent, African
photographers are now showing the world what they see through their
lens. This is Africa spotlights them in a series of interviews.

Paradise Utopia [2011] Ⓒ Charles Okereke

"Using photography as a platform Charles also wants to seek conscientious
leadership amongst the youth, because that has been the bane of their
existence for the new generation of Nigerians. Together with other arts,
photography has luckily been fast accepted as a medium to value. “Yet
more effort is needed in a thorough and proper education of the use of
it as a veritable tool in appropriating and disseminating factual
information which does not distort reality,” says Okereke.

Evil Signs [2011] Ⓒ Charles Okereke

Stimulating conversation
“With my photography I try to create awareness by elevating the
mundane, the ordinary and the discarded from the common place to a
valuable state which thereby incites a discourse. Shooting the usual
with an unusual approach which defamiliarizes the known to an artistic
level which in its duality instructs and at the same time enchants.” The
future for Charles is now and now is the time to create this future.
For this reason he started the Alexander Academy of Art, Design and
Alternative Methods, training young, talented Nigerians and other
Africans in arts-related subjects and design. “They are the future and
guiding them encourages me to put more effort in realizing my own
objectives as well.”

Profile

Charles Okereke is a multimedia artist. His philosophy is that life is ever-expansive and the limits are always self imposed. Naturally, we are all very free to explore the vast vistas of existence and for Charles Okereke, as an artist, this is possible.